The BLS has total employment figures by general industry. See the Employees on nonfarm payrolls by major industry sector, 1961 to date
Looking at the employment by industry as a % of total this is how it looked graphically:
One thing that sticks out is the gradual downward trend in the manufacturing jobs as a % of the whole. If we look at the percent of total jobs that each industry has you can see that there were some major shifts in the 50 year period.
| 1961 | 2010 | Change | |
| Total Private | 83.9% | 82.7% | -1.2% |
| Total goods producing | 34.5% | 13.7% | -20.8% |
| Mining and Logging | 1.3% | 0.5% | -0.8% |
| Construction | 5.4% | 4.3% | -1.1% |
| Manufacturing | 27.7% | 8.9% | -18.9% |
| Total Service producing | 65.5% | 86.3% | 20.8% |
| Trade, Transportation, and utilities | 20.4% | 19.0% | -1.5% |
| Information | 3.1% | 2.1% | -1.0% |
| Financial Services | 4.8% | 5.9% | 1.1% |
| Professional and business services | 6.9% | 12.9% | 5.9% |
| Education and health services | 5.6% | 15.1% | 9.5% |
| Leisure and hospitality | 6.4% | 10.0% | 3.6% |
| Other Services | 2.2% | 4.1% | 1.9% |
| Government | 16.1% | 17.3% | 1.2% |
As you can see there was a significant shift of about 20% from goods producing jobs to service jobs. The single biggest loser was the manufacturing industry which dropped 18.9%. In 1961 over 1/4 of our jobs were in manufacturing but by 2010 that had dropped to under 9%. Manufacturing jobs peaked at 19.4M in 1979 and had dropped to 11.5M in 2010. Education and health was the biggest gainer in jobs as % of the total with an increase of 9.5% from 5.6% to 15.1%
Note that some of those categories are sub-totals not individual industries. Here's how the sub totals and industries add up:
Total private + government = total
Total goods + total service = total
Total goods = mining & logging + manufacturing + construction
Total services = trade,transport, utility + information + financial + professional, business + education, health + leisure & hospitality + other services + government
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